Reconstructing Younger Dryas ground temperature and snow thickness from cave deposits

Abstract

Abstract. The Younger Dryas stadial was characterised by a rapid shift towards cold-climate conditions in the North Atlantic realm during the last deglaciation. While some climate parameters including atmospheric temperature and glacier extent are widely studied, empirical constraints on permafrost temperature and snow thickness are limited. To address this, we present a regional dataset of cryogenic cave carbonates (CCCs) from three caves in Great Britain that formed at temperatures between −2 and 0 °C. Our CCC record indicates that these permafrost temperatures persisted for most of the Younger Dryas. By combining ground temperatures with surface temperatures from high-resolution ground-truthed model simulations, we demonstrate that ground temperatures were approximately 6.6 ± 2.3 °C warmer than the mean annual air temperature. Our results suggest that the observed temperature offset between permafrost and the atmosphere can be explained by an average snow thickness between 0.2 and 0.9 m, which persisted for 233 ± 54 d per year. By identifying modern analogues from climate reanalysis data, we demonstrate that the inferred temperature and snow cover characteristics for the British Isles during the Younger Dryas are best explained by extreme temperature seasonality, comparable to continental parts of today's Arctic Archipelago. Such a climate for the British Isles necessitates a winter sea ice margin at approximately 45° N in the North Atlantic Ocean.